A Beginner’s Guide to Listing your home on the Web

A Beginner’s Guide to Listing your home on the Web.By Nick Holt
Hello to everyone out on the blogosphere.  Fair-warning, today’s post is going to be different from our usual press releases, updates, and announcements. This will be the first of a three-part series on Internet Marketing for Real Estate.


According to NAR’s 2010 “Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers”, 89% of home buyers searched the internet ‘frequently’ for a home in 2010. And the share of home buyers who found their home on the internet jumped from 8% in 2001 to 37% 2010.  In meeting with my clients and other agents, it’s very clear to me that while everyone recognizes the importance of using the internet effectively to sell real estate, many have little to no idea what exactly that entails.  To help answer these questions, advise for sale by owners on how to do this, and to try to explain why a job-title like “Director of Web-Based Marketing exists; I’d like to touch on three important aspects of utilizing the internet as a marketing tool.


Part One:  All Web Listings Are Not Created Equal
Many discount Real Estate Brokerages, Craig’s List Aficionados, and For Sale by Owner Sites, are happy to tell you that they will put your listing up on the internet, and then give you the link so that you can see exactly where it is.  It is important to realize that, while this makes up part of internet marketing, it does not mean that your home is being effectively marketed on the internet.  Remember, possible buyers for your home do not have that direct link to the listing, they have to find it organically.  Try using your favorite search engine to find a home like your buyer does, i.e. search real estate in your county, town, village or neighborhood and see if the broker’s website shows up.  If you are having a hard time finding it, the buyers probably are too.  You wouldn’t advertize in a newspaper nobody reads,  the same goes your listing website.
Good real estate companies and listing services recognize this and employ tech wizards (like this guy), called SEO’s tomonitor the algorithms that search engines use, and tailor their websites so that they show up at or near the top of the search engines’ rankings on relevant searches.  Without doing this, all a company is doing when talking about their “web presence” is giving you lip service.


Thanks for reading and check back tomorrow for Part II "One Great Website is Good, Many Good Websites are Great".
Nick Holt is a licensed sales associate, member of "The Peak Team", and director of web-based marketing for Howard Hanna Holt Real Estate.  Chautauqua County-headquartered Howard Hanna Holt Real Estate, offers comprehensive residential and commercial real estate sales, leasing and related services including real property appraisals, property management, development services, vacation property rentals and traditional rentals. Owned by the Holt family, the local affiliate of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services has offices in Fredonia, Mayville and Westfield, on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution, at the Bemus Bay condominiums and at Peek'n Peak Resort and Spa.

Howard Hanna Real Estate Services is the third-largest independent real estate company in the United States, the country's fourth-largest full service real estate company and the sixth largest mortgage banking company in the nation. The company serves the Western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia real estate markets.